'The Village' Lost the Election

Via X, I learned of Nate Silver's essay titled, "The Expert Class Is Failing, and So Is Biden's Presidency."

It is well worth the read, but I'll note my dislike of the term expert class, despite its currency. It is a populist, demagogic phrase that is too easily weaponized for "class warfare" and for dismissing expertise as such. A better, but still imperfect term I'll use instead is Establishment.

The essay interests me, and probably would interest anyone else who has read philosopher Leonard Peikoff's The DIM Hypothesis: Why the Lights of the West Are Going Out.

Why? It echoes Peikoff's description of an establishment with one philosophical mode losing its grip in the face of rejection by the culture at large. In the below passage, the Indigo Blob is the collection of establishment-aligned institutions (and any intellectuals working within them): "the merger between formerly nonpartisan institutions like the media, academia, and public health" and the Democratic Party and organized "progressives."

"The Village" is the Establishment, the bulk of the intellectual leadership of the Indigo Blob. It consists of what I believe Peikoff's mentor, Ayn Rand, would have called the intellectuals of the left, namely "the expert class of academics, journalists and like-minded types."

"The River," are entrepreneurs and other risk-takers, some of whom, if they are not outright intellectuals, are looking to support an alternative to the Establishment:

The Indigo Blob can weave superficially compelling narratives, often involving a lot of whataboutism. Biden pardoned Hunter? Well, what about Trump pardoning Paul Manafort? Those school closures were bad? Well, what about anti-vaxxers? Not on board with full-blown wokeness? Well, then you're in league with the fascists. But these stories have become increasingly desperate and implausible. The Indigo Blob suggested that it was "ageist" to be concerned about Biden wanting to be president until he was 86. It said that educated white men brought about Trump's victory, even though college-educated whites were actually the only group of men who didn't swing heavily MAGA.

And so these narratives have become unconvincing other than to a narrow group of Village midwits. Both the multiethnic working class and an increasing number of highly successful people like those in the River are seeing through the bullshit.

So now the Village has a double failure. Its institutions serve the public increasingly poorly -- but it's also increasingly losing politically. If Trump's victory against a Harris campaign that literally ran out of ideas wasn't proof enough of that -- I'll have a long critique of the Harris campaign beginning later this week -- people are also voting with their feet, fleeing blue states and cities. Corporations that embraced wokeness have now done a 180-degree turn in the other direction. Saturday Night Live is back to making fun of Democrats. [links omitted]

This atmosphere distinctly reminds me of the chapter "What's Next?"

In the following passage, D, D₁, and D₂ can be taken to mean Establishment, and M to mean religionists:

The Weimar Republic had its own background tradition of M, Christians -- Lutherans, Junkers, et al -- who in the 1920s were out of power. The new Republic, which replaced them, was "the first modern culture," according to historian Peter Gay; regarded as the opposite of Christianity, it was a hotbed of pioneering D₂s in every intellectual field, including art and science, flourishing under the benevolent gaze of the new political establishment. The government was a coalition of three democratic parties, each a variant of D₁ and thus concerned primarily to secure concrete-bound compromises among pressure groups. Both types of D were against Hitler, but neither offered philosophic opposition, mostly because of their disdain for ideology, but partly also because of the continuous demands on the D₁s to cope with successive emergencies and pay their bills. In addition, it was difficult to argue with Hitler when both they and he agreed on the same conventional and uncontroversial code of ethics -- namely, the ethics of duty, of sacrifice to (German) society. Seeing all this and the economic disasters to which it led, the German people despised the Weimar Republic, ridiculed the politicians as unprincipled non-entities, and cursed the nihilists as "cultural Bolsheviks" (a term that mistakenly equates nihilism with Communism). Meanwhile, the German youth -- roving bands of seemingly ungovernable, guitar-strumming hippies (as they were called in the sixties) -- were disenchanted with everything adult. All these rebels, fanned by the public and nearing a boil, knew of only one alternative mode. With the triple trigger of the Versailles Treaty, the runaway inflation of 1923, and the depression of 1929, the nation voted that alternative into power. Like the rest of the country, the ungovernable youth at once fell into line. Hitler told them their duty, and they dropped their guitars. What they picked up instead we know.

Trump is not Hitler, but there are similarities in how this all played out: All branches of the cultural Establishment strongly opposed Trump without offering compelling arguments against him or (better yet) for a superior alternative. The Establishment was ineffective and widely scorned, and frequently and incorrectly equated with communists, with traditional (read: religious) values frequently and equally wrongly portrayed as "the opposite" (i.e., the antidote), especially as against the more outrageous causes of the left, such as the pandemic lockdowns/mandates and "wokeness."

We are in a precarious time, and the American people, faced with more of the same vs. a roll of the dice (my most charitable conception of what a Trump Presidency can mean) have understandably chosen the latter.

Advocates of freedom have been warned. We may not be even so lucky next time.

-- CAV

Updates:

Today: Corrected typos.

Iran's 'Trump Rebuild' Is Underway

Barely two weeks ago, in the wake of rumors that Elon Musk was meeting with Iranian leaders on behalf of Donald Trump, I said:

If true, Trump fans will paint any "agreement" with Iran as evidence that the mullahs are scared.

In fact, this signals weakness, just like every other negotiation has, and it will merely provide Iran time to regroup and finish developing nukes.

This morning, I ran into the following headline, from a paper that endorsed Trump: "EDITORIAL: Trump Election Moves Needle in Middle East."

Right off the bat, it reports on a development that had me scratching my head last week, when I first heard about it:

Last week, Hezbollah agreed to a cease-fire with the Jewish state after being pummeled by Israel's might and sophisticated intelligence operations. The terror group, based in Lebanon on Israel's northern border, is an Iranian proxy with deep ties to Tehran.

It did not take me long to find out why Israel, which has been enjoying great success in clearing out the quasi-military infrastructure Iran was surrounding it with, had suddenly decided to make a deal with an entity that was still lobbing rockets at it.

The (immediate) blame goes to Team Biden:

Morph via FaceShape from pubic domain official portraits of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Describing the move by former officials from the Obama administration who now work in the Biden administration, he said, "What the Obama-Biden team did on their way out was to coerce the Israelis, reportedly with the threat of an arms embargo at the Security Council, into signing onto Obama's vision for the U.S. role in Lebanon, which is part of his broader pro-Iran realignment. This is the downside of the agreement: it consolidates this Obama framework that should have been dismantled -- and that's separate from the tactical and strategic gains that Israel achieved on the battlefield. Rather, this pertains to U.S. policy and how the Obama-Biden team used Israel to lock in their regional preferences."

He continued, "The deal puts the incoming Trump administration and the Israelis in a weird situation, not just because it saddles the new administration with Obama's preferences in Lebanon -- including hundreds of millions in additional aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces -- but also it makes the U.S. an arbiter for Israeli action against Hezbollah moving forward and the possibility for friction that may create between the Trump administration and Israel. [bold added]

Saddles with? -- or provides cover for? That Musk meeting was what -- at least a week before? -- that lopsided, weak agreement.

Returning to the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

The timing is no coincidence. It wasn't long ago that President Joe Biden warned Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu against hitting Hezbollah targets. And it was just a month ago that Iran's supreme leader promised "a crushing response" against Israel for defending itself in the face of terrorist aggression. He also threatened American targets. But now, Iran has signed off on Hezbollah's retreat and is rethinking its bellicose strategy.

"Iran's swing from tough talk to a more conciliatory tone in just a few weeks' time has its roots in developments at home and abroad," The New York Times reported last week. Those events include the Nov. 5 election of the "unpredictable" Mr. Trump, Israel's "decimation" of "Hezbollah -- the closest and most important of Iran's militant allies" and Iran's declining domestic economic fortunes. [bold added]

Iran, through its proxies, started this latest escalation in the war on the West it started in 1979. If its leaders really were concerned about their "declining domestic and economic fortunes" or preserving their military assets in Lebanon, they could have ended hostilities without Biden and Macron's "help."

Note that they hadn't, even after Israel basically pulled its pants down in front of the world with its last air strikes on Iran. It is revealing that Iran did not, and a shame that Israel is being held back from (rather than being assisted with) ending the Iranian threat when it would be so easy to do so now.

Furthermore, anyone with the faintest understanding of war knows the difference between a strategic retreat and actually "rethinking [a] bellicose strategy" -- as witness the popular saying live to fight another day.

It is equally astounding and disgusting how smoothly the American right is slipping straight into the same failed strategy of the left and -- now that "their guys" are doing it -- shifting from deservedly blaming Obama-Biden to praising the alleged machismo of Donald Trump.

-- CAV

Four Neat Things and a Break

A Friday Hodgepodge

I'll be taking a week off from blogging as we travel and host guests over Thanksgiving Week. Happy Holiday!

***

1. An article at Atlas Obscura titled" Teach Yourself to Echolocate," draws from the expertise of an instructor to explain how to develop the skill.

Daniel Kish, for example, has this to say about the sound one uses to produce the required echoes:

Clicks are not created equal, and some of them will work against you. "The most commonly produced rubbish click is a 'cluck,'" Kish says. A cluck sounds something like two clicks on top of each other, which masks the returning sound. A good click can't be sloppy, and it must be possible to reliably reproduce.

For beginners, Kish says that a dental click fits the bill (this is a tsk-tsk sound, Kish says, "like you're disappointed"). Another contender is the sound you might use to prompt a horse to giddy-up; a "ch" sound, as in "check" or "church," is another option.

I knew that some blind people could echolocate, but I had no idea that it is as common as it is, or that it was being taught.

2. Older folk and retrocomputing enthusiasts alike will be intrigued by a question Raymond Chen recently took up: "Why does Windows 95 setup use 3 different UI's: DOS, Win3.x, and Win9x?"

With the aid of a flow chart to show how it worked, Chen shows this strange state of affairs to be a creative solution to a few problems, avoiding duplicated effort being the main one.

The Lord Howe Island stick insect, once thought to be extinct, is being brought back from the brink after a population was found on an uninhabited Island in 2001. (Image by Granitethighs, via Wikipedia, license.)

3. When the spoiler is the teaser, run with it anyway: Australia/Lord_Howe is the weirdest timezone, according to Ulysse Carion's surprisingly absorbing explanation of how computers deal with time zones and Daylight Savings.

And yes, I fibbed a little by not saying why Lord_Howe is the weirdest. You'll have click through to find out.

4. This one is partly a reminder to myself to read the entire article, namely Gwern Branwen's "Why So Few Matt Levines," in which the author asks why there aren't more people like him, "who explain & popularize other major industries which are vital to modern life."

I learned of the piece through Hacker News and, as I normally do, looked at the comment thread a little first. Within that were several interesting candidates for "other" Matt Levines. That, too, merits a return visit.

-- CAV

Warm Fuzzy Idea, or Troublesome Tribble?

At Ask a Manager, Alison Green tackled a question about something that sounded like an innocuous way to boost morale, but in fact achieved the opposite effect:

This bit of sci-fi lore is going to help me remmeber to be more curious in the future. (Image by Stilfehler, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

So yeah, kill the [birthday] cards. Explain to Diana that while she intended it as a morale-boosting effort, it's ended up having the opposite effect on the people who were missed, and that you hadn't accounted for how much time it would take to organize and get signatures, and that your own boss wants it stopped for those reasons. If she says she doesn't mind spending the time on it, you should say, "I appreciate that, but given that it's turned out be more than a few minutes here and there, it's not something I want you spending your time on anymore." If she continues to push: "I appreciate where you were coming from -- it was a kind idea -- but it's causing too much disruption and my and Jane's decision is to stop it."

If Diana says again that she'll do it on her breaks instead ... well, she's missing the point! You'd need to respond with, "People have the impression that this is an office-sponsored activity, it's causing drama, and you cannot do it at work anymore. If you choose to give cards outside of work, this history means that it's highly likely to still be perceived as something 'from' the office and lead to more hurt feelings, which would make it a work issue, so I certainly hope you will have the judgment not to continue."

The workplace is, of course, not the only place one encounters well-intentioned efforts that are or cause much more trouble than they appear to be worth.

One that snuck up on me as a young parent was toys as gifts. Early on, I was bemused when, taking one of the kids to a birthday party, there was sometimes a request that guests not bring gifts.

A few years later, while getting ready for a move, I remembered those wise requests with jealousy while I made an incredible number of toy donations to charity just to thin things out a little.

One of my sisters-in-law headed off another common one of this kind of idea: hand-me-down baby clothes, by stating up front: We don't have room to store a lot of extra clothes. My wife tried that for a bit, but the logistics were a nightmare. It was impossible to keep up and, as soon as I learned that our across-the-street neighbor collected clothes as a charity, that backlog disappeared and we opted out.

The solution to such problems is always the same: Be clear about what the problem is, and be firm about boundaries. The hard part is that it's easy to be blindsided: Who doesn't like being remembered on their birthday? Kids love toys. Free clothes can save time and money.

One unexpected lesson I got here is to be braver and more creative when I encounter an odd practice, like that no toys rule. One can ask without prying, and the answer is bound to be interesting or even, I suspect, instructive.

-- CAV

DOGE 'Pork Busters' Retread Is DOA

"[W]e cannot start calculus before we know arithmetic -- or argue about tariff protection before we know the nature of government." -- Leonard Peikoff ("The American School: Why Johnny Can't Think", 1984)

***

On top of the various on-point jokes flying around about DOGE -- starting cuts by creating an agency, having two bosses, etc. -- there is one small problem with the whole idea of trimming fat from the government budget: You can't address a fundamental problem by making marginal changes.

As my title indicates, conservatives have tried this before, so I have the benefit of having already thought about this.

Back in '08, Tea Party types were forwarding a column around that made it particularly easy to see the problem. Quoting it again:

Stop the abuse of our benevolent welfare system. We feed children free meals three times a day until they are 17. Churches give away good, clean clothes. Companies buy and donate school supplies. Emergency rooms provide health care at taxpayer expense and the food stamp program is buying food at home. What are parents doing for their children?

The first sentence nullifies all the rest, while almost asking the question that needs asking: "Why (and by what right) do we need a welfare system at all?"

To that I responded:

Image by Pork Busters, via Wikipedia, I believe my use of this image to be fair use under U.S. copyright law.

Since when has taking money away from its rightful owners -- which must be done sooner or later to fund welfare programs -- been "benevolent"? This system is inherently abusive! The only way to stop "abuse" in a system financed by theft is to do away with such a system, and begin consistently protecting property rights. In the meantime, everyone who wants to feel good about helping the poor is free to do so.

Ditto for "Stop all unnecessary spending so we will have the money for our nation's security, and to help needy and elderly Americans." Forget about the relative magnitudes of wasteful spending compared to the amount of money it takes to fund welfare state programs: What's "unnecessary"? (I nominate, "the government stealing money"!)

In other words:

Such grassroots efforts as "Pork Busters" form when enough people become outraged at such things as that infamous "bridge to nowhere" -- and yet nobody challenges the massively larger larceny cum vote purchasing that is the welfare state, and which makes such relatively penny-ante outrages possible at all.

So, to quote Ronald Reagan, the half-forgotten half-man of the conservative movement, Here we go again.

Except that things are arguably worse. Back in the aughts, some Republicans at least mooted the idea of backing our country out of Social Security. (I fondly remember ending up on TV as a "man on the street" and getting to say inter alia that no, Social Security wasn't 'outdated,' but rather never was a good idea to begin with.)

Now? Trump has taken Social Security and Medicare off the table. These are two of the biggest drivers of the government deficit, and are things the government shouldn't be doing anyway, "efficiently" or not. Servicing the debt is a huge and growing obligation that can't be touched without causing economic calamity.

The most optimistic take on this I've seen lately is that Musk and Ramaswamy might wring $2 trillion from the budget -- which was nearly $7 trillion this year. (I don't see it.) Our debt, by the way, is $36 trillion, up from 23 in '19.

Absent a fundamental shift in which our politicians are guided by restoring government to its proper purpose, the protection of individual rights, there will only be this nibbling at the margins. Meanwhile the leviathan will grow out of control until the unsustainable mess mercilessly self-corrects.

Trump -- whom the partisan hacks at Issues and Insights completely shielded from blame for his role in worsening this mess -- is not the man to do this. He is committed to pretending the welfare state can work, whereas the first step towards solving any problem is correctly naming that problem.

Spoiler alert: Waste isn't that name. Inefficiency isn't it, either.

Speaking of waste, this election was a historic opportunity for change. We wasted it on Trump II, instead.

-- CAV

'Don't' Won't Work for Trump, Either

Trump has yet to take office, but he has already replicated Joe Biden's attempt to conjure world peace through magic incantations.

Not so long ago, when Iran threatened to bomb Israel into oblivion, Biden famously said, "Don't." We all know how that turned out:

...President Joe Biden issued a warning to any state or hostile actor considering attacking Israel: "Don't, don't, don't." And yet, Israel has faced relentless bombardments from multiple Iranian proxies for the last six months. The ineffectiveness of Biden's strategy was on full display again this past weekend, when the president issued a similar warning to Iran against striking Israel, this time with a single "don't." Predictably, this did nothing to halt the rogue state, which launched 300 drones and missiles at Israel late Saturday night. Almost all were intercepted, thanks to the combined efforts of Israel, the U.S., the U.K., France, and several Arab states. [links omitted]

I had forgotten that Biden had tried this cantrip multiple times, all to similar effect.

Have no fear! Trump's followers will say Trump will soon straighten all of this out.

Indeed, just as he has lost no time in making dubious cabinet picks, Trump has been communicating with hostile international figures, including Putin and, if rumors are to be credited, Iran's mullahs.

Trump, who is aggressively dovish and imagines that anything can be smoothed over with a "deal" (i.e., diplomacy) appears to have a foreign policy much like his successor/predecessor, absent (we hope) the arms embargoes to Israel.

The embarrassing man-crush may have a bigger chance of surviving than American deterrence. (Image by the Kremlin, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already waltzed right past a pointed warning from the MAGA leader, sending tens of thousands of soldiers to the Ukrainian war front after Trump told him not to escalate the situation.

...

Trump had spoken with Putin over the phone on Thursday, reportedly advising the foreign leader not to escalate the war, reminding Putin of America's military capabilities in Europe, according to The Washington Post.

Don't wasn't effective coming from Biden's lips and the same word won't become effective by the magic of being said by Donald Trump.

As with anything else, the Republicans are going to fool around with the theory that "our guys" doing essentially the same things (e.g., diplomacy, deficit spending, and central planning) the Democrats did will somehow make it work, and they are going to find out otherwise.

-- CAV

Stossel and Lowe on Elections

On Election Day, John Stossel wrote a piece that offers a dose of perspective that we Americans are fortunate enough to need reminding about from time to time:

Image by chilla70, via Pixabay, license.

No matter who wins this election, we don't need to wait for government permission to solve our problems.

Left to our own devices, we adapt and innovate. Without direction from Washington.

A final, most important thing to consider if that horrible other candidate wins:

You and I are not normal. We spend time reading about politics.

Most Americans don't. As one told me, "We have lives!"

Most of what really makes life worth living -- family, friends, music, love, religion, recreation, hobbies, art, food, travel, health -- doesn't depend on who is in power.

Politics is loud and sometimes unavoidable. Yes, the American government has grown so much that it now sucks up nearly 40% of our money. Yes, it sometimes stops us from doing good things. Yes, its mandates are often stupid and counterproductive.

But government is just one piece of a much bigger picture.

The real magic of life happens where you live. [bold added]

This perspective may well be hard to keep over the next four years -- and for my fellow travelers, this would have been the case even if Harris had won -- but it is crucial to do this for the sake of sanity and to keep one's compass in what promise to be turbulent times.

Being interested in cultural and political change is nuts unless that interest has preceptual-level and deeply emotional anchors to the facts of reality. Appreciation for what's there is what keeps us going, and it's what will motivate us -- those of us with more than a "normal" interest in such things -- to fight back in whatever way we can.

Regarding that last, my favorite science blogger, Derek Lowe, concretizes what this can mean for an intellectual activist. And again, it also would have applied, although often to different specifics, in the wake of a Harris victory:

[I]f you allow yourself to become totally outraged every time there's something that under normal circumstances would be worth being totally outraged about, you'll never make it. Because these aren't normal circumstances. Slow down. Take a deep breath. Take some time to work out what the most efficacious thing you can do about any given outrage might be and when might be the best time to do it, and where it ranks next to all the others. I will be following this advice personally, so don't expect to see rapid reactions here to every single hideous thing that happens.

We're going to need our energy, our stamina, and our hope for better things to make it out of all this intact, because there's going to be a lot of work to do after this is over. Keep working steadily to make sure that it does indeed pass. Be strong, and stay strong... [bold added]

This last reminded me a little of a partisan in-law from the left coast who seemed to spend the entirety of Trump's first term ... obsessing about Donald Trump. But there's no room for smugnes this time around. Trump is, if anything, nuttier and better-prepared: Folks who would otherwise forget all about politics may need to work some to keep from having him live rent-free in their heads 24-7.

Do not allow this threat to what you love cause you to forget what you love.

-- CAV